Society for the Promotion of Culture and Art

SPOCA Bangladesh

Housing and Water, The RCSG-Project in BanglaDesh / Sunil Ganguly Centre for Catastrophe and Environment Protection

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By Prof Dr Norbert Pintsch

The term housing can be understood as a wider term for place of residence and includes for example construction techniques using local materials and traditional forms of construction up to Hi-Tech element utilizing alternative technologies, in which concepts of re-cycling (slums and autonomy (self-sufficiency) are implemented.


Extreme climatic and environmental conditions play an important role in housing solutions. The spectrum of construction activities considering these factors extend from steep coasts at and on seas up to those in stone ,ice and sand deserts. Climate independent projects can be implemented at all places, where changing climate plays an important role.


One should not be striving for an ideal type of housing rather considering adaptation of housing solutions to local conditions.

Areas endangered by floods, storms and earthquakes around the globe require special local based solutions.

Under the term “ Closed Systems” we understand projects with completely different environmental conditions, which are not subject to earthly climatic condition and influenced rather by metabolism and production of water and oxygen, for example in space stations.

Such space stations appear at first utopian, however such a model of closed system is interesting when considering global problems created by changing climate and environmental conditions.

An example for housing under extreme environmental and climatic conditions is the German Neumeier-Station the Antarctica. It serves the research, but at the same time points to special construction effort offering permanent experiences.

Natural catastrophes (earthquake in north India) and floods (Indus region) have led to the search for suitable solutions for the affected victims. There is no complete solution available as such but a number of possibilities.

Immediate help from foreign countries and local construction experts are needed and when these are not sufficiently available, integration of construction students into such activity is necessary.


The same is valid for regions with similar natural catastrophes (earthquake in South East India) and flooding affected areas (Ganges/Padma and Brahmaputra/Jamuna).

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